


Alone

by Lilian



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Morally Ambiguous Character, Past Relationship(s), Secret Snarry Swap 2018, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-01 21:04:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16772902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilian/pseuds/Lilian
Summary: Harry loses his way, and nearly takes the whole of Wizardry down with him.





	Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you hippocrates460 for awesome advice and for looking over this, thank you mods for organising this event, thank you all you beautiful people who ship snarry for reading. :) 
> 
> Prompt 50 from amanitamuscaria: After his battle with Voldemort, Harry is the only person left in the world with magic.

“It’s gone it’s gone it’s gone” Ron chants frantically, and Harry cannot feel anything but the smallest twinge of sympathy – for Hermione, who looks dreadfully scared as she holds onto Ron’s hands so they don’t strip the skin off his face.

Harry says, “You will be fine,” and wonders if he sounds as cold and as empty as he feels.

*

Ginny comes over for the rest of her things. Her eyes are not red anymore, but her back – just as stiff.

“Get some help,” she spits in his direction before she steps into the fireplace. When she regards Hermione, her voice softens, almost to a pleading tone: “Hermione, make him get some help, will you?”

Harry looks at Hermione, almost perversely curious about her reaction. Hermione’s parents are still in a forest somewhere. Without magic, she has no chance of finding them ever again.

Hermione swallows and presses her lips together. Other than that, she doesn’t acknowledge Ginny, who mutters something amusingly rude and leaves.

*

It spreads like a wildfire. It did not start with Ron. Harry reckons it broke out with that bloke who worked for the Ministry. The photographer. He was annoying, deeply, unsettling him to the bone. They were having tentative fun, for the first time ever. In the Great Hall. A feast. Even George had been there, and he smiled a little at some stupid line Harry used to poke fun at Ron, and he almost smiled properly for the first time since…

The photographer came and ruined everything with his flashy camera (Colin) and loud chattering (Lavender) and Harry just thought, with so much hate he shuddered, _you don’t deserve to have magic_.

He felt a tiny bit better when the man twitched violently and excused himself hurriedly soon after gulping down air like someone who needed to throw up.

*

The reports arrived in the _Morning Prophet_ the next day. It was another owl that brought them, and Harry waited until amongst the excited murmuring someone handed him the pages. A dozen cases, and an interview with a mediwitch saying that the individuals in question seem to have nothing in common besides attending the feast at Hogwarts the previous night. A reassurance that they are working on a solution.

All day, everybody ever talks about is the Disease. After a while, Harry tunes them out with an unusually powerful _Muffliato_.

*

McGonagall refuses to give him back Snape’s memories. The castle or the board or someone chose her as the next Headmistress, it seems, and she lists bullshit reason after bullshit reason why he can’t have them. Never mind that the Pensive is not hers. Never mind that the memories were given to Harry specifically. Never mind that it’s the first real thing he has of his mother, and the last proper thing he has of Snape.

Harry screams one long, desperate wail that has the portraits on the wall hush, then start speaking excitedly again. They are too much, just like McGonagall, who looks sad but still put together. Unwavering. Harry reaches out then, not with his hands but with his magic, reaches out from somewhere behind his ribcage and takes it away, pulls it in.

The pictures freeze on the walls and McGonagall… sags. In a matter of seconds, her hair turns completely white and the skin on her hand wrinkles.

She starts speaking to him, aghast, but Harry is already walking towards the door. On his way out, he touches the stones, makes them immobile, because otherwise, McGonagall wouldn’t be able to get out of the room. He doesn’t want her to come to any harm. This isn’t even a punishment. It’s just a way to make people think.

*

Harry walks in the night. He moves around London like a bad mugger, never quite managing to stay out of the shadows. In Muggle and Wizarding Spaces alike, people look at him with questions in their eyes.

His skin starts to prickle after the first week or so. He would compare it to becoming a huge storm inside, or perhaps a thousand little lightning bolts aching to get out. He doesn’t tell the analogy to anyone, because people wouldn’t understand, especially the people who so recently lost their own spark.

Harry thinks it’s funny how, when he only had his own magic, he didn’t even feel a thing. Now, with it growing and feeding on others’, it’s steadily becoming all he can feel.

*

“Harry,” Hermione says, in that serious, ‘listen, we need to talk, we’ve been looking for the Horcruxes for forever and haven’t stopped to bathe in three days,’-voice, “you know this is not healthy, right?”

Harry bites his tongue. Hermione is his friend. She can’t help the way she is, obviously.

“Grief needs to be processed. Not bottled up. You should talk to us, or a therapist, or---”

“Not interested.”

Hermione huffs, clearly annoyed.

“Well, the thing you’re doing now, it’s gonna kill you, and potentially others. Hell, there’s already been reports of suicides due to the--”

“That’s not _my_ doing. Folk just think it’s the end of the fucking world to lose their magic. Not my fault that they are so dependent on--”

“Social change, Harry, can occur in a lot of different ways, and what you’re doing is causing panic and anarchy.” Fantastic, her lecturing voice now. “I know how frustrating it must be to watch--”

“You have no idea.”

Hermione slaps her hands together in outrage.

“Of course I do, you bloody prick! I was there with you most of the time. It’s not just you who suffered losses, Harry, it’s all of us. And until you are ready to accept that the only thing that can help you now is opening up to other humans, I have nothing else to say to you.”

Harry snarls at her. For the longest time, they were a united front. For some time now, well, ever since Ginny broke things off between them, no one dared to confront him. He is so angry at Hermione, the words just tumble out of him in a hateful hiss.

“Beware what you say. I can take yours just as easily _any time I want_.”

Hermione looks equally angry, and funnily, not scared at all.

“Do not dare to threaten me, Harry Potter.”

She leaves, and Harry leaves her magic as it is, thrumming and defiant, alive, intact. He thinks about going after her, apologising. Trying to start talking to her, but the emotions stuff themselves into his throat, his nose, his brain, and he feels so god damn tired.

*

He locks himself into his room the next morning and stays in bed.

Sometime later, Ron’s voice penetrates the fog in his mind.

“Harry, Snape wants to talk to you.”

Snape is dead. He died in the Shack after giving Harry his memories. This must be another nightmare, but the minutes pass, and the blood drums in Harry’s ears, and Ron calls out again softly, with the helplessness always present in his voice now, and Harry’s feet just carry him to the lock automatically, then out the bedroom and to the salon where Severus Snape is sitting, pale and thin and with a huge crimson-y bandage wrapped around his neck.

*

Snape watches him with dark, mocking eyes. He doesn’t even open his mouth, just glares at him, and Harry feels an unsettling weirdness in his stomach.

“He lost it too, so the tear on his neck can’t properly heal without his magic supporting the treatment,” Hermione chimes in quietly, and they all look at her. Harry didn’t even realise she was in the salon. Harry looks back to Snape, whose frown deepens.

“Right. So. We’ll leave you to talk,” Ron adds awkwardly. He takes Hermione’s hand as they walk out.

Harry swallows. His mouth is dry. Snape is alive. Snape is…

Snape is rolling his eyes, gesturing at his neck as if he’s forced into a room with the biggest idiot on the planet. Perhaps that’s exactly how he feels.

Harry steps closer, almost shaking with nerves. He lifts his hands and feels foolish, but it’s too late to back out, not possible anymore under the weight of that heavy gaze. He barely touches the cloth on Snape’s neck, but he feels the magic flow out of his fingers, absorbing into Snape immediately. He feels lighter, right after. Then Snape gives him the stink eye and says,

“How have you managed to fuck up so royally again, Potter?”

*

Snape pretty much rips him a new one in the following minutes, and by his third sentence, Harry is laughing mirthlessly. That laugh turns into something that’s almost a sob, which turns into something of a fighting hug because Harry might have lashed out with his fists and Snape might have just held him against his chest to hold him still.

Harry doesn’t cry, there is just wetness on his face sliding down, and Snape keeps murmuring to him _what have you done, you insipid child, you have a talent for doing the most impossible nonsense,_ but he sounds as if he’s just berating him for putting an extra ingredient into his potion that accidentally counteracted with something he mistakenly put in earlier and reacted in a totally unexpected way which Snape said made the potion useless but his eyes had sparkled and he had interrogated him what exact way he did every little motion no doubt to replicate it later in his lab and it’s a tone that’s almost affectionate and surprisingly warm. Something like that happened in Harry’s second year, and he never really thought about it right until now.

Snape says:

“As always, _I_ have to be the one to clean up your mess,” and it sounds put upon and grumpy.

*

Harry sleeps for twelve hours. When he gets himself together enough to go and get breakfast, he hears Snape arguing with Hermione on his way to the kitchen.

“--perfectly fine, Miss Granger, and you are much more desperately needed in the Ministry than here looking after His Almighty.”

“You may be healed completely, Professor, but you don’t have your magic. What happens if Harry attacks you? He’s certainly in a very delicate frame of mind...”

Harry walks further ahead, and the voices drift out of his ear. With only half a thought, he calls the rest of it, what he can feel pulsing in the world, into himself. Out of Hermione, out of every other magical being in and around London.

*

He is alone. Without magic, the rest of the world spins on. But he is alone with the burden of it, with its bittersweet, heady, coppery taste, with the lightness in his lungs and the steel-like pressing on his shoulders, his heart. There is a buzzing in his mind as if the magic swirls around in him like angry, agitated bees. It hurts. It hurts so badly.

When Harry is able to look out into the world around him, he sees Snape sitting in front of him at the kitchen table. He has a pinch between his eyes. Harry would think he looks concerned if he didn’t know it’s Snape.

“Harry,” Snape says quietly, trying out the word. It’s not exactly a question, but it cannot be called a statement or a demand either.

“What, _Severus_?” His name: a challenge, a jeer, a triumph.

Snape’s eyes gleam at him, filled with warning.

“Do you trust me?”

Harry laughs.

“No, I don’t.”

How fucked up is he, though? He is perfectly aware it’s a lie but still hopes Snape can’t tell.

*

Snape keeps him company. He is quiet except for the times when he ridicules him. Harry doesn’t mind, it’s not very convincing but helps him focus on something. He starts sweating midday and develops an intense fever by midnight. Severus checks his temple with cool hands that soothe it for a few blessed seconds.

“All that magic, it’s burning you up inside,” He imparts his completely obvious wisdom like Harry’s not fucking aware. “It will chew you up completely.”

“And you got front row seats to the show, congratulations!” he growls. “Why are you even here, fuckhead? Enjoy watching me suffer?”

Snape looks livid. He comes so close to him they’re basically shouting into each other’s faces.

“I’m trying to save you, brat!”

“Ha-sodding-ha, what would I need saving from? You’re late, Voldemort is long gone.”

“It is never simple with you, Potter. This time, it’s a wonderful mix of your own idiocy, your hero complex, your bleeding heart--”

“You have no idea what it’s like!”

“Look. At. Me.”

A ragged breath and a second later, he is sucked into Snape’s mind through his eyes. Except, it’s not really the same as with Legilimency. He feels as if he’s Snape, merging into him, seeing what he sees, feeling what he f--

“What is this?”

“It’s all that magic inside of you being incredibly susceptible to suggestions. Potter, if you don’t let it out, you’ll die within a week. And as annoying a little whelp as you are, I don’t actually want that.”

More than Harry ever expected to hear from him, and still, Snape manages to make it sound like an insult.

“You care about me?”

There are some intense eye-rolling and a few sighs. Harry is, honestly, behind the pressure of his headache and the dizziness of his fever, mildly amazed.

“No, say it out loud,” he dares. “Do you care about me?”

“Of course I do, you bloody idiot. Do you think I kept you alive all these years because I had nothing better to do?”

“I thought that was only because Dumbledore made you.”

“Professor Dumbledore, and yes, because he instructed me to do so, and because I felt guilty about your mother. But as soon as you grow up, I’m sure I’ll find some better way to entertain myself.”

“I’m grown up.”

“Hah.” Snape snorts, hand dancing around Harry in a wild circle. “Your current predicament says otherwise.”

Harry hates this man so fucking much.

“Fine,” he snaps after some time passes when he can’t even think because of the bloody swirling that has taken over his entire body, “help me then.”

*

Snape draws ancient runes on the ground and makes Harry chant until he knows all the phrases fluently. He teaches him the wand-movements too. Harry hasn’t touched his wand since the whole issue started, so now when he holds it, it feels foreign.

Snape stands behind him and moves his arms, long fingers gripping his elbow or rearranging his on his wand. He is surprisingly gentle. Perhaps he knows if he pushes Harry any other way than with his words, the bolts of lightning might get him too.

*

They have an argument with Hermione in the kitchen later that evening. About whether Harry has the right to decide between channelling all magic back to the earth, or giving it back to their people.

Snape listens to them go back and forth about the Wizarding World’s stupidity and utter dependability, and only cuts in when it seems as if Harry might explode in frustration.

“While it is indeed ‘unfair&rdquo’ that Mr. Potter is the one that gets to make this decision, Miss Granger, it is also patently unfair that he was forced into another situation, not so long ago, which he and only he could solve. And, I would like to add, whatever his final choice will be, he solely is the one who will carry the responsibility and consequences of that choice.”

Hermione ignores him and pleads with Harry to consider it from multiple angles, and to choose the better way with empathy. Harry knows which choice she’d like him to make. Maybe not just the magic, but she misses her parents. When she finishes her speech, Snape and Harry get up to retire and walk all the way to the room Snape’s been staying in. They stand there, in front of the door, and Harry feels warmed by the certainty that Severus will wait for him to get his thoughts together.

“What would you do?”

“I would put everything back to the Earth, and only keep enough for myself.”

When Harry glares at him, he smirks.

“Are you surprised? I’m a Big Bad Slytherin.”

Harry shakes his head, and looks down on his feet, trying to hide his smile.

“Would you like to come in?” Snape asks a bit later, quietly. Sure, Harry understands, they might look pretty foolish standing outside Severus’s room, staring at his slippers. Snape’s face is careful, mellow. But his voice, that was intimate. Full of something. Holding back, perhaps.

He nods, and once Snape closes his door after they’re on the other side of it, Harry moves in to kiss him, hoping he didn’t misinterpret. Snape freezes, for just a second, when their lips meet, but after that, his eagerness matches Harry’s.

It’s not quite a fight but not quite a caress either. Something of a discovery perhaps, a conversation without words. Harry kisses him again and again and it helps with the humming in his body, concentrates his attention on what they’re doing. Severus kisses a bit clumsily, but as if he can’t get enough, and Harry _needs_ to feel needed, wanted. Enveloped, too. So he grabs Snape’s hips and pulls him closer and fuck that makes their mid-sections come into hot contact and Snape is hard against Harry’s own erection.

The desire in him is forcing the insistent magic into the back of his mind. Snape’s smell (anise) and touches have him writhing against him and he leans back to brace himself against the wall. His hands grip Severus’s hip harder, urging him to do something else, to slip his hands lower on him. He wants, he wants so much, the tip of his cock is wet already, and he can’t take it, not without that touch of his hands please please please.

His back arches when Snape finally shoves his hands down his pants.

“You want this?”

Harry lets out a long moan, something he’d be embarrassed to admit later on, and chokes on the hundred yes, yes please I’ll do anything, begging you, please. Nods frantically, attacks Severus with his mouth wherever he can reach, kissing his temple, cheek, jaw, lips again. He smells of arousal and sweat and fuck Harry is so gay and his mind’s reaction to that thought is just an enthusiastic ‘yes cool get on with it’.

Snape’s fingers are so clever, so wonderful. They dance on his cock and Harry has to bite his mouth shut first and it feels so achy, so good. He remembers to reciprocate but can’t figure out how to get Snape’s pants to open and Snape grumbles something about, ‘Don’t mind that, later,’ but Harry wants to touch that hardness, so he just presses his right hand to him through the clothes and it’s needy as fuck and if Severus’s bitten-off curse is anything to go by, he likes that.

Harry lets out a whine. He kind of wants to die and hold onto something and the only thing he finds is inside him, unwilling to settle, lighting up everything inside him with power and longing and pain and there is just so much of it that want to get out, he has to… has to...

“Come on, Harry, let it go,” Severus encourages him, panting, jerking his cock, and it only takes a bit more, one pull, two, of his wonderful nice talented hands and three and four and he is coming, magic and come breaking, flowing, leaking him out of him with a rush. Snape holds him until he’s spent, and before he passes out, he feels him carry him to the bed.

*

He wakes up and finds Snape watching him, half sitting up next to him in his bed.

Snape flicks an eyebrow up.

Harry feels… sort of exhausted, but much better. When he feels around, which is a much bigger effort than he remembers it being, it seems like everybody got their magic back.

He squints up at Snape.

“Did you only sleep with me to make me release it back to the people?”

“No, I slept with you because I had a hunch that Ron Weasley might try to throttle you in your sleep and wanted to be here to see his reaction to your presence in my bed.” He smirked menacingly. “It was Exceeding Expectations, by the way.”

Oh, shit. The fallout of that will be nothing compared to the whole ‘you took my magic away, you wanker’ conversation.

“You know what I mean!”

“Well, you were the one who started it!” Snape says defensively, slightly red in the face. “I only wanted to talk last night, and didn’t expect to be kissed silly against my door.”

“I don’t recall you objecting at all.”

Snape harrumphs, but brings his long-fingered hand to smooth a lock of Harry’s messy hair out of his eyes.

“Yes. I might have gone completely barmy,” he agrees quietly.

Harry smiles up at him, links their fingers and lies back down again. He wants to sleep a bit more. After that, breakfast. Kiss Severus again to see if he still tastes the same without the twirling magic inside Harry. Maybe talk a bit about the past. About the future.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment here or at [LiveJournal](https://snape-potter.livejournal.com/3849105.html), [Insanejournal](http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snape_potter/1781951.html), or [Dreamwidth](https://snape-potter.dreamwidth.org/1100200.html).


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